Inching Toward the (Undoubtedly Heavily Redacted) Torture Report

After years of inquiry, $40m in expenses and an unprecedented clash with the Central Intelligence Agency, the Senate intelligence committee voted on Thursday to declassify portions of a study into the agency's use of torture on detainees suspected of being involved in terrorism.

[...]

And while the White House recommitted itself on Thursday to a prompt public release of portions of the report, it announced that the CIA will play the lead role in reviewing for publication a report that calls Langley lawless and deceitful.

“The CIA, in consultation with other agencies, will conduct the declassification review,” National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

  Guardian

And if that doesn’t satisfy you, nothing will.

WTF?

This is becoming standard operating procedure in our government: Put the agency being looked at in charge of the looking.

Feinstein pointedly noted after the vote that how much of what the administration makes public “in itself will indicate where we are on this.” She hoped for a partial declassification within 30 days, and said she would seek a fuller declassification of the 6,200-page document later – a move that could give the committee leverage over the scope of how much information the administration seeks to withhold from the executive summary release.

Please forgive me if I don’t expect to gain anything from that; if I don’t feel Dianne Feinstein has the world’s, much less Americans’, best interests at heart.

Alberto Mora, the former Navy general counsel who fought with the Bush administration over torture, said he considered the Senate vote to be a vindication.

“I think we’re going to have an authoritative, factual accounting of what actually happened with interrogations,” Mora said.

[...]

Mora said, it would help the United States “return to the principle in the future that anyone who commits this crime, regardless of rank, will be called to account and perhaps criminally prosecuted”.

Please forgive Mr. Mora his naiveté.

On Wednesday, defense lawyers for [Guantánamo detainee], Ammar al-Baluchi, said they filed a now-sealed motion for the Senate torture report to be entered as evidence in his case.

On 14 April, the tribunal will consider whether Baluchi’s co-defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, is competent to stand trial. Bin al-Shibh was subjected to the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” that are detailed in the Senate report.

Well, there’s at least that. Of course, then his lawyers have to face the perhaps insurmountable issue that military judges may not be opposed to torture – I mean “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Enhanced. Makes it sound like a good thing, doesn’t it?

And there’s this positive note, as well:

Two of the perceived swing voters on the Senate committee – independent Angus King and Republican Susan Collins, both of Maine – said that the techniques used on al-Baluchi and others “constituted torture”, a rebuke to a decade-long effort by the CIA and its allies to recast the interrogations as something less brutal.

Republican Susan Collins. She may lose her Senate seat – or at least her committee chair.

Steve Kleinman, [...] air force reserve colonel and former interrogator, said [...] “When anyone tortures, that’s not interrogation, that’s torture. We can’t conflate the two.”

Amen.